Father Figures
by TotallyLosingIt
Summary: Wally's running from his past, Artemis is dealing with her daddy issues, and Superboy's just a bundle of teenage angst. Who knew they'd all have something in common? Warning: deals with child abuse
1. Chapter 1

Father Figures

**I've wanted to do something like this for a long time now. Unfortunately, I've never had the time or the patience… and Wally hasn't been too cooperative, either. Anywho, I'm still stuck on the whole child abuse thing, so let's pretend that in this story, **_**Innocence **_**never happened, k? Awesome.**

**Wally, if you please.**

**Wally: I really don't see why you make me do this. I own myself, so why do I have to say that you don't?  
>Me: Because… I don't know! Because!<br>Wally: Whatever. Lost doesn't own anything. Oh, and there may be possible triggers throughout the story related to child abuse, so read at your own risk.  
>Me: Also, extreme violence warning. Feel free to skip the parts in italics if it makes you uncomfortable. Trust me, I know how that is.<strong>

**Enjoy!**

Something was up with Artemis.

Wally watched her out of the corner of his eye. The archer's shoulders were tense as she leaned over her book. He couldn't see what she was reading, but he was willing to bet the words weren't registering in her brain. Her eyes were skimming past line after line, but she wasn't reading. Her mind was a million miles away.

Usually he'd be over there by now, annoying the heck out of her. But his instincts told him this wasn't typical Artemis Brooding Time. Something was up—something big. And Wally had used up every ounce of his patience to sit quietly for almost a full two and a half hours and watch her. He strolled casually by the couch she was sitting on. He tapped a rhythm softly on his knees. He pretended to take a nap. Occasionally Robin came by asking to play some video games because he was bored, or Kaldur would request training time, and Wally would come up with an excuse to turn them down. On a normal day, he would've pounced on the chance to do something on such a slow week. But this wasn't a normal day. Something was up with Artemis.

He was naturally impatient, even before he got his powers. All this waiting around was driving him nuts.

Finally, _finally, _Artemis closed her book with an audible _thud _and snapped, "Will you stop staring at me?"

Wally blinked. A thousand clever comebacks shot through his head in less than a fraction of a second, but all that came out was, "Was it that obvious?"

Her eyes rolled—something she seemed to be doing a lot lately. "No, I just made you sit still for two hours just to see if you could do it."

"That was sarcastic, wasn't it?" Wally scowled. He hated being played—with a passion—but the way Artemis acted, he might as well have been a fiddle. "Look, something's wrong."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Wally zipped over to her as she stood so fast the pages in her book went flying. He leaned over her to get right up in her face, because he knew she hated that. "You've been sulking."

Artemis' face turned purple. "I have not!"

"Have so!" He pushed a finger into her face to indicate her furious expression. "See? You're doing it right now."

Artemis made to swipe his finger away but he pulled it back before she could get to him. "That's because you're up in my personal space," she growled. "Now back _up _before I knock you on your yellow behind."

Wally crossed his arms. "Look, I'm just saying. Something's wrong, and I want to know what."

"Nothing's wrong."

The ginger studied her. That was a blatant lie. It was completely devoid of insults and jabs, and her eyes shifted somewhere over his shoulder so she wouldn't have to look at him. Artemis was an amazing liar, and he could tell—but he was also hyper-observant, and he could see all the tell-tale signs that she was lying.

"Artemis," he said, taking a step forward, his voice more serious than he usually liked to take himself. "What's wrong?"

Again, her face turned a variety of colors, from purple to red to pale. "Nothing's wrong," she said again, but this time pouring every ounce of venom and anger into her voice that Wally stepped back a bit in case she started spewing fire or something. Without another word she pushed past him and stomped off to who knows where. Her book had dropped onto the floor and Wally bent down to pick it up, staring at the title.

_A Child Called It_

_Oh, man. _The book slipped from his fingers and thumped back to the floor. Wally stared at the far wall, plagued with flashbacks.

_Dad was mad._

_Wally crouched in the tiny space between his bed and the wall, knees curled up to his chest. His bright green eyes squeezed shut and he held his hands over his ears, but that didn't help much. He could still hear Dad breaking things in the kitchen outside his room. His mother was crying. His father was yelling. Thuds and crashes assaulted his ears. A few tears slipped out of Wally's eyes but he brushed them away hastily. He was almost eight, he wouldn't cry._

_Heavy thumping in the hallway told him Daddy was coming for him now. Daddy always found him—the house was small, and even though Mom told him to hide when Dad got mad like this, he always found him. Sure enough, the door opened, and Rudy West stood, swaying on his feet, glaring into the dark room._

_Wally clapped a hand over his mouth and tried not to breathe as loudly as he thought he was. It didn't matter. Dad marched over to the side of the bed and grabbed Wally's arm._

_Wally bit his lip as his father's fingers dug into his arm, laying bruise on bruise on bruise. He didn't cry, didn't react as his father dragged him out of his room and threw him against the wall in the hall. Wally hit the wall and slid to a sitting position, dazed, but couldn't recover fast enough to avoid the foot aimed at his midsection._

_The session lasted eight minutes this time. _Better, _Wally mused to himself as his father passed out on the couch in the living room. Usually the sessions lasted half an hour to forty-five minutes. Once, it had stretched to almost two hours. Wally hadn't gone to school for three weeks after that._

_Wally sat up slowly and assessed his injuries. Nothing felt broken. He knew what broken felt like, because once Dad has broken an arm and two ribs in one session. But not this time. This time, he had only a dislocated wrist, a few long cuts, a bloody nose, and a whole mess of bruises. Not bad at all._

_He ignored the pain and limped over to his mother. As usual, Mary West was unconscious on the floor in the kitchen, bleeding slightly. Dad always took out his anger on her first before coming to find Wally. She was an easier target, Wally figured. Because she was a girl. Every time Dad went into one of his sessions Mom ended up on the floor. Wally crashed to his knees by her side and grabbed her hand, waiting for her to wake up._

_Rudy woke up minutes later. Mom was still unconscious as he staggered into the kitchen, holding his head. His eyes fell on his son and wife, and Wally stared right back up at him. He didn't usually get up after his sessions, but Wally was beyond showing surprise, or any emotion, really. Rudy's eyes widened in horror and he fell to his knees, checking his wife's pulse and then gathering Wally up into his arms, not noticing when the seven-year-old tensed at the contact. The smell washing over him was the familiar but unwelcome stench of alcohol and cigarette smoke off his father's clothes and mouth._

"_Oh, my God, Wallace," the man sobbed. "What have I done? What have I done? I'm so sorry!"_

_Wally let his father hug him and stared at the wall behind him. He'd never done this before. Was it too much to hope that maybe he'd get okay again? Maybe he was just sick, maybe he got help. Maybe, finally, they'd be a family again._

_There was a picture hanging up, a picture of him and his father and his mother. He was just a baby then. He didn't remember the happiness in the picture that looked so right, so nice. He wanted to so bad._

_Tears sprang to his eyes again, but this time, he let them fall._

"Dude." Robin snapped his fingers in front of Wally's face. "Dude!"

Wally blinked. "What? What's wrong?"

Robin frowned at him. "You were just staring off into space, like you were frozen or something. Are you okay?"

Wally thought about it and then gave his friend a grin. "Yeah, dude, I'm awesome. Want to play some Black Ops?"

"Can't," Robin said, shrugging. "Gotta find Artemis."

"Why?" Instantly Wally was alert. "Is something wrong?"

Robin rolled his eyes. "You should know; you were staring at her for a good two hours."

He sprinted away, cackling, while Wally crossed his arms and scowled. "For the record," he shouted after him, "it was more like an hour and a half!"

…

He knew. Artemis knew he knew, and that's why it was so infuriating. Something in the way he looked at her sometimes, when they weren't screaming at each other, told her that he knew. Didn't matter how hard she tried to hide it. He always freaking knew.

"I'm your father," his eyes said. "Of course I know."

Somewhere between growing up, being part of the Shadows, and joining this stupid team, she'd lost sight of her goal. Her objective. Her purpose, her _mission, _her everything. She'd gotten soft. And he knew that.

That's why he'd worked her over so hard this morning. He'd visited her mother's apartment while her mother was away, trashed the place, broke every picture, tore every curtain, wrecked everything that her mother worked so hard to rebuild. And then he had gone out and intercepted her while she was patrolling with Ollie. He didn't lay a hand on her. He just stared at her with his arms crossed and said, "I'm very disappointed in you, Artemis."

Artemis hated him. No, she loved him—that's why it was so hard. He knew she loved him, so all he had to do was say a few simple words. Crush her soul, her spirit. Break her down without ever touching her. He didn't need to—the Shadows and their training did that for him. All he had to do was be a father—except in overdrive.

Those six words nearly brought her to tears. She wasn't afraid of him—well, in some ways she was—but fear wasn't the emotion he worked on. He worked on her longing to fit in and be loved. To be rejected cut deeper than any blade could. Artemis had a lot of walls. They didn't do her any good when it came to her father.

She managed to choke out an, "I'm sorry," before he cut her off.

"You've lost sight of what matters most," he said. His voice sounded pained, like the last thing he wanted was for her to get hurt. "If you keep straying like this… I don't know what will happen."

A threat. Except not. Because he sounded like he didn't know, he sounded like he hated this just as much as she did. Sometimes Artemis wondered if he loved her. Because everything he said and did screamed of fatherly protectiveness… but then he did this. And she was so confused and frustrated that none of it made sense.

It would be so much easier if he were evil like the rest of the Shadows. At least then she could say that she hated him and mean it.

Artemis stared up at the ceiling now, in her bedroom at Mt. Justice. At some point during the last three months Wally had snuck in and wrote _Wally's watching you! _in blue and green Sharpie. Stalkerish, maybe, but now it seemed almost comforting, knowing she could come home and be normal like everyone else.

She sat up suddenly. _Come home? _Where had that come from? She shook her head sharply. "I can't think like that," she whispered to herself aloud. "I can't think like that."

Mt. Justice wasn't home. Mt. Justice was an enemy stronghold she was currently living in as an undercover assignment as a mole. She was feeding information to the Shadows and stabbing her friends—her _enemies—_in the back in the process.

She didn't have a choice.

**I want to clarify some things. This fic will be dealing with physical abuse, emotional abuse, and neglect. I refuse to write sexual abuse into a fic—not because it doesn't exist, but because I'm so disgusted by it I can't bring myself to write it. Maybe someday. The only reason I'm writing physical is because I'm already an action/adventure writer, and the only reason I'm writing emotional is because I've experienced it.**

**This won't all be abuse. The plot is orbiting around the plot of Artemis as the mole (which I don't believe, but it's a fun concept to play with). Anyways, a lot of people have Wally treating her coldly when he finds out. I want to put him in a position where he can't, because he knows what it's like.**

**Anyways, because of this sensitive material this fic will be a high T. If any of this makes you uncomfortable, I don't recommend reading this.**

**Thanks!**


	2. Chapter 2

**This is the hateful filler chapter. Gah, I hate it. It's just soooo…. boring! –shakes head– I apologize in advance. But hey, I'm developing serious issues needed to foreshadow the oncoming storm! So pay attention and try not to drift to sleep like I want to. Next chapter will have action, promise. ^_^**

**Also, to Guarded: You didn't leave me an account so I can properly reply to you, but I just wanted to say how much your review touched me. I've never been physically hit but I do know how it feels to be helpless, frustrated, and, yeah, abused. I can't do anything from here but I hope that situation around you changes, or has changed, or will change. Feel free to shoot me a PM if you want to talk—I found that helps a lot.**

The problem was, Conner thought too much. He wasn't the type of person to talk, and when you didn't talk, you thought.

Conner had a lot to think about. He would sit in his room and stare at the wall and think about what it would be like to have real parents. He thought about what it might be like to grow up a normal kid, go through childhood like everyone else did. He wished he had a birthday. He wished he could've celebrated getting a driver's license—or even before that, just learning how to ride a bike without training wheels.

He wished he had parents to celebrate with.

The others didn't know it, but everything they said and did reminded Conner of what he didn't have. Kaldur would talk about the advice "his King" had given him, M'gaan would talk about "her uncle", or "Wally's uncle". He didn't have an uncle. He didn't even have a mentor. His namesake wanted nothing to do with him.

It concerned him, how these thoughts usually took a dark road. He wanted things he couldn't have, and it hurt sometimes. Okay, it hurt all the time, but what else could he do? He couldn't pretend like the others that life was okay, because sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes, life just sucked.

Conner was aware that the teenage hormones he'd been born with were rampaging through his head. Aware of it, but not immune to it. That was probably why he sounded so whiney in his own head. Why should he care that Superman, _the _Superman, wouldn't even acknowledge his existence? Call him by his given name, Superboy, or even Conner? Or the _S _on their chests, _both _of theirs? Was it possible to give the Man of Steel a wake-up call so he would become the father figure Conner needed him to be?

The problem was, Conner thought too much.

It was the same thing, over and over again. He didn't think of much else. People were constantly comparing him to the biggest power in the world. He couldn't measure up. They wanted him to, but he couldn't. And his _dad _wouldn't help him with that either.

Sometimes Conner wished he'd never been grown.

He was sitting now, staring at the television screen. As usual it was filled with the white and gray fuzz of snow on the screen, and to everybody else, static in the air. But Superboy's advanced hearing could pick up on each individual radio signal passing through the snow, keeping him entertained even though the rest of them looked like he was crazy.

A shaky voice from Artemis reached his ears and he turned his head slightly to the left, listening for the words. _"I can't think like that, I can't think like that."_

Was she talking to him? But she didn't know he was sitting her, or listening to her, or even what he was thinking about. Conner hesitated. There was real pain in her voice, broken, hurt, agonized pain. Not physical, though. More like her soul had been taken and snapped in half, and she was just clinging on reality, that somehow it'll all be okay. Conner could relate to that.

After another moment's hesitation he stood up. He would go talk to her… but what would he say? She wouldn't believe him if he told her he wasn't eavesdropping, and it really wasn't any of his business anyways. But part of him wondered if that pain, that emotion, in her voice was real, real enough to be like his. That maybe she _got _it, maybe she understood what it was like to be…

He heard a knock on Artemis' door and hung back instead, listening carefully.

…

The first time Artemis stood up to her father, her mother ended up in a wheelchair. A truck had run a red light at the exact time her mother was crossing the street, grocery bags in hand. Artemis had been with her—she'd run on ahead, trying to beat the crosswalk's "walk" timer. She turned around and suddenly her mother was on the cement ground in a pool of blood, unconscious. She had four broken ribs and had damaged her spinal cord so bad that she would never be able to walk again.

The driver had gotten away, but not before giving Artemis a smirk and a wink.

Artemis had never opposed her father after that.

She knew it wasn't his fault, necessarily. He'd simply reported like he was supposed to. It was the Shadows that were sent to kill her mom—it was only luck that they failed, and only her cooperation that they wouldn't do try again.

It took her three weeks of being officially apart of the Shadows to figure out that her father had been training her since childhood. All those sports he'd suggested she take, the extreme mountain climbing, skydiving, skiing, snowboarding, swimming in extreme weather, taking three different martial arts classes, _everything—_his plan all along was for her to join this league of evil people and she hated it with a passion.

A knock on the door tore her from her thoughts. She swore softly under her breath—the last thing she needed was to fall into this depressed funk again. She was no help to her team—_the team—_or herself if she couldn't think clearly.

Artemis crossed to the door and pulled it open. She started in surprise at Kid Flash standing there, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Just hear me out," he said hurriedly when she opened her mouth to cuss him out. "Listen, can we talk?"

Artemis glared at him. "No." She went to shut the door in his face but Wally slid his foot in between the crack of the door and its frame and stopped her.

"Artemis, you're tearing yourself up inside," he argued. "I can see it, I can tell."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Artemis snapped. "I told you already, I'm _fine. _Why can't you leave it alone?"

Wally huffed a sigh. "I know you're too pig-headed to see it, but we take care of our teammates. You're one of us now, whether you like it or not, and everyone can see that you're definitely not _fine."_

Artemis threw her hands up. "What do you want from me?" she yelled, frustrated.

"Tell me the truth!"

"About _what?"_

"You!" He waved his hand around her face as a gesture to her general form. "Why you do the things you do, everything about you. You're just a giant wall, Artemis, and you don't let anyone in."

"I don't need you digging into my personal life," Artemis said, glaring.

He shook his head. "I know. You shove off every time we get close. What I want to know is, why? What's so bad about your past that you can't _trust _anyone?"

"Because it's not my _past _that's the problem!"

Artemis froze. She couldn't believe she'd been outmaneuvered so easily. Wally stared at her, a puzzled from on his lips, and then broke into a delighted grin. "Good, now we're getting somewhere!"

She let out a frustrated growl and turned into her room. "Go away, Wally."

He rolled his eyes. "There you go, shutting people out again. You know, life's not all about the bad stuff."

"Oh, and you would know."

Wally stepped into her room behind her and closed the door. He gazed at her for a minute and then said, "Yeah, I would."

Artemis turned around. His green eyes were a little sad, but they locked onto hers with a fierceness she didn't understand. Then they softened a little, and he stepped forward. "If you need to talk, I'm here. I won't…" He took a deep breath. "I won't judge. I know I'm not the first person that pops into your mind when you need to rant about stuff—"

"No, it's alright," Artemis found herself saying. And surprisingly, a slow, shy smile spread on her teammate's face. Artemis found it infectious, and smiled back.

There was a tentative knock on the door and Megan's voice filtered in. "Artemis? Aqualad is calling us for mission briefing."

"Awesome," Wally muttered, but he was still smiling.

They stood there in comfortable silence for a minute more before Artemis said, "We should go."

"Yeah, you're right." He gave her a wave and then, in a blur of yellow and a blast of wind, he was gone, her bedroom door still swinging open.

Artemis shook her head. Wally didn't know how much she needed him sometimes.


End file.
